Hard to help some people

I received a call today from the part of town that was flooded last week from 8 inches of rain. Gentleman tells me that his basement was under water last week, but he has been drying it out himself. The problem he said was that it was still very wet........8 days later mind you!!

I went over to check it out....yikes. Basement was 35x40, oak base moldings, linen wall paper, silk furniture, and a very angry wife sitting in the corner. I went to the corner and pulled back the carpet....sponge padding and it was saturated to the point that there we puddles beneath the carpet. The guy turns to me and asks if I could just dry it or something.

We talked at length, and right now this little 5'2" Perto Rican gentleman is ripping out a huge span of drenched carpet and pad. I don't know how far up the water reached, but there is a definite temperature difference to the walls about 3 feet up. I will go back tomorrow to inspect further and start the recovery process.

Such a shame, he could have saved all of that stuff if he would have called in that first 24-48 hours. Now, it might end up costing him plenty. I will know more tomorrow, but I am almost out of Sporicidin and will need to find something if everyone isn't already out due to the volume of working being done right now.

A lot of ethnic communities are taking floods / water damage very lightly, part of it is because those part of the world hardly have any wood subfloor, most of them are concrete / hard surface, and they don't do drying / water damage restoration when flood hits. Also they don't want to spend thousand of dollars or involve insurance companies because they are afraid the insurance companies are jacking up their rates when the time comes to renew their policy.
I had a lot of Asian customers in my area asking me to "just clean" the carpets.

I didn't think about it from the ethnic angle...just the "you are a damn fool" angle, but you are probably right in your analysis.

The going rate seems to be around $4,000 from the disaster franchises that swarmed the town to dry out basements. The over-charging is incredible in my view.

You're right if he would have called you sooner than there wouldn't have been that bad of a problem. I assume he thought that he could do it himself and it would turn out fine. floods are no joke though nearly all flood damage required professional cleaning to get everything back to normal.

I think once they were told that the insurance wouldn't cover it, they panicked. They live on a flood plain and pay for the flood insurance, but it didn't cover anything, so the thought of paying 5-6 grand to repair the basement was just too much for most people.

The sad part is that they still ended up paying those amounts to the franchise companies due to extended damage from not drying quicker.

I feel good about those that I was able to help (7 in total) and I suspect that it will lead to some very good referrals as a result.